Josh Holmes tells some of the story of how open source--and even contribution--came to Microsoft. Worth a listen.

"My full-time job is writing open source software ... at Microsoft." Josh Holmes, Director of Architecture, Microsoft Partner Catalyst Team, has one of the coolest jobs I can think of in the IT and startup worlds. He runs a large team of top notch engineers whose mission it is to help startups with hard technology problems. And they help them by fixing, improving, and contributing to open source tools that they need. Yes, this is a Microsoft job. Yes, everything they work on is contributed back to open source projects. Really.

David Bishop from NinetyOne Consulting and I sat down to chat at Drupal Camp Bristol 2015. The sailing charity, Bart's Bash, invites you for a day out on the water in Barcelona harbor on September 20th! Bart's Bash is an amazing charity in honor of a respected British Olympian, Andrew "Bart" Simpson, who died young in a tragic sailing accident. While organizing what they thought would be a small fundraising effort, the charity singlehandedly kicked off a new movement and inspired a new, international movement and community in sailing. And a great Drupal scalability and functionality story: David Bishop built the small, 2-page brochure site to support the initial funding effort and then ended up building it out to include mapping, community sign-ups and groups, real-time data-ingestion and -processing. In 2014, the site collected sign-ups and processed race data for 30,000 sailors in 17,000 boats from around the world - wow!

Part 2 of 2 - In a recent conversation with Tom Erickson, Acquia's CEO, we got to talking about Acquia's "Drupal 8 All-In", what it is and what it means for the Drupal world and those we have yet to convince ... Acquia has drawn a line in the sand, saying, this thing is so great, we are confident we can deliver the kind of help and experience that we've been guaranteeing with Drupal over the last 7 or 8 years. This thing is ready enough. And all of the rough edges that we find along the way; this is the perfect opportunity to sand them off. This thing, Drupal 8, is ready for real business. In short: Acquia is running customer sites on Drupal 8 already, supporting all of Drupal 8, helping get the last rough edges off it for general release, and would love to talk with you about your next project and whether Drupal 8 is a good fit!

At a recent Acquia all-company meeting, I was glad to hear that half of the current group of Acquia U students and 7 out of 12 of the latest "BDR" hires in Sales were women. Acquia's CEO, Tom Erickson added that this was the result of some "objective, data-driven" hiring practices. I had to know more. I got Acquia Senior Manager of Business Development and Sales, Chris Hemberger on the line to talk about all of this.

Part 2 of 2 - I spoke with John Faber, Managing Partner with Chapter Three, on March 17th, 2015.

In part 1 to talk about the business advantages of contribution and sustainability when basing your business on open source software. We also touch on Drupal 8's potential power as a toolset and for attracting new developers, doing business in an open source context, and more!

Part 1 of 2 - Drupal user number 5622, John Faber, has been involved with Drupal since late 2003. He is a Managing Partner with Chapter Three, a San Francisco-based digital agency. Their slogan sums up well what a lot of us think about Drupal: "We build a better internet with Drupal." John and I got on a Google Hangout to talk about the business advantages of contribution and sustainability when basing your business on open source software. We also touch on Drupal 8's potential power as a toolset and for attracting new developers, doing business in an open source context, and more!

Ani Gupta, Drupal Mumbai community lead, StartupNext lead, formerly at Axelerant in India, and I got the chance to continue the conversation I began with Piyush Poddar at Drupal Camp London about the changing face of IT and open source in India. Under the heading "from consumption to contribution" we talk about India's move from being perceived as being good for cheap, outsourced code to being a place rich with brands and startups in their own right and the home to much open source contribution. We also talk about old versions of Drupal, the Drupal community and its mentoring culture, open source acceptance in business and government, and more!

When Tom Feichter told me he only gets to one Drupal event a year, I wanted to know why. When he told me it's because he runs a Drupal shop–mspiral creative media–in Yangon, Myanmar, I had to know more! We talked about Tom's history in Drupal, how Drupal's multilingual capabilities have helped him, how excited he is about Drupal 8's architecture, his history working with NGOs on the Thai/Burmese border and how that has flowed into ethical digital agency work, and more.

Michelle Sanver–developer at Liip–and I sat down and talked at SymfonyCon 2014 in Madrid. Michelle and I have a number of interests in common (community, FTW!) and I really enjoyed getting to know her better in a conversation in front of my microphone and camera. We covered her long history in PHP, her SymfonyCon presentation (Life After Assetic: State of Art Symfony2 Frontend Dev) the PHP Renaissance bringing communities together, Michelle's "open source addiction", building PHP applications that touch the lives of almost everyone in Switzerland, and more.

I was happy to talk with two major contributors to Drupal 8 at the same time at Drupal South 2015 in Melbourne Australia. At the time we recorded our conversation in March 2015, Hussain Abbas from Bangalore, India and Jibran Ijaz from Lahore Pakistan had both contributed well over 100 patches to D8. In this podcast we talk about their history in Drupal, open source software as a force for good in society, the benefits of contribution, Drupal as the 1st project of the PHP-FIG era, Drupal 8 for developers, the incredible energy and size of the Australasian Drupal community, and more.

In April 2015, I was excited to talk with John Doyle, General Manager Technology & Solutions Architecture at the Australian full-service digital agency Komosion, to explore their decision to adopt Drupal to replace other technologies, including an in-house CMS they'd invested 10 years of work in. In this podcast, John very clearly lays out what Komosion's priorities were in making this decision, the benefits for the agency and its clients, and the future he sees using Drupal as the basis for future work.

At Drupal Camp London 2015, I spoke with Piyush Poddar, Director of Drupal Practice at Axelerant. We talked about Piyush's history in Drupal, Drupal as a business-ready solution, India's coming of age in open source culture, and how that is driving business value.

The European Acquia Global Support team had an onsite week in Reading the week after Drupal Camp London 2015. I got the chance to see a number of them there and sit down with two of my friends from "Supporta!"–Daniel Blomqvist and Henk Beld. We talked about remote teams and helping others succeed with Drupal, while also paying it back/forward by sharing and teaching what they learn and what they know.

It was great to get the chance to sit down and talk with Jordi Boggiano at SymfonyCon Madrid 2014. Jordi is responsible for Composer, one of the most important pieces of technology that is driving PHP interoperability and the PHP "renaissance" of the last couple of years. He's also on the Symfony2 core team, "and bad about telling things about myself."